Paladin of the Dead God - Chapter 354



Only Krnovel

Episode 354. Thirsty Dinner (4)

If you’re going to be betrayed, then betray.

Why seek revenge only after being betrayed? Just kill them first before being betrayed.

You might think this is some apocalyptic thinking where there is no trust, but this ‘I’d rather betray than be betrayed’ concept is surprisingly traditional.

The most famous figure would be Cao Cao.

Trust is a surprisingly recent concept.

People often think of the image of innocent savages and mean, godless civilized people, but the truth is the opposite.

Trust and honor are inventions of civilized man.

As humans developed agricultural societies, built cities, and began to recognize close combat groups as nobility, the concepts of ‘morality, honor, and trust’ emerged.

It is a restraint put in place to prevent a powerful armed group from unilaterally shaking up society.

This group, commonly called ‘knights’, willingly wore the yoke in pursuit of the illusion of honor, and it soon became the exclusive property of the nobility.

People admire successful people. That’s why civilized people have come to worship ‘morality, honor, and trust’, which were exclusive to the aristocracy. This has become the social order. But barbarians don’t know that.

It’s not because they’re practical. It’s just because they don’t need it yet. That’s why they’re savages.

That is, when dealing with barbarians, you need to become a barbarian to some extent.

This is because the opponent is a being from a thousand years ago who may not know the concepts of God and morality.

***

“… … Do you really believe that Sadrazza would betray you?”

Kururur, kookung.

The outskirts of Mirmia.

Isaac was out in the desert hunting monsters.

The small city, which was thought to have once been a satellite city of Mirmia, was built around an empty lot where an oasis was presumed to have existed.

In the center of the clearing was a giant spider with arms and legs as thick as your forearms, but it wasn’t even clear if it was a spider at all. It had at least twenty legs, and its body in the middle was a crude imitation of a human face with tentacles that swayed.

“Huh? What did you say?”

Isaac had just cut off the spider’s limbs and shoved his tentacles into its body, so he didn’t hear Aidan’s words properly.

“I asked if he really thought Sadrazza would betray him.”

Isaac only filled his stomach this time, and did not gain any special predation effects. However, he felt full much faster when eating chaos beasts than when eating normal animals.

Isaac thought for a moment and then opened his mouth.

“When I arrived in Mirmia, I felt something was missing.”

“You feel empty?”

“There was no graveyard.”

“Graveyard… … right?”

Aidan asked as he sprinkled ritual salt on the corpse of the spider monster that Isaac had defeated. It was his job to prepare the corpse so that it would not spoil and would be suitable for the ritual.

“As far as I know, there were survivors living in Mirmia right after the disaster. There were actually wells left, and it wasn’t an environment where people couldn’t live. Of course, their lives would have been in danger anyway since the sea was scorched… … But there were people?”

“Right… … I guess so?”

“But there wasn’t a single corpse in Mirmia.”

Aidan was about to say that there was no way a corpse from a thousand years ago could still exist today, but he felt something strange and closed his mouth.

A thousand years is enough time to turn a corpse into a pile of dust.

If it’s an ordinary place.

But this is an extreme land where even the sea dries up.

“There may be no body, but the mummy may remain.”

Extremely dry conditions with no rain, abundant salt, and consistent weather with no temperature changes.

It is the most suitable environment for mummies to be created.

Of course, Isaac is not a mummy maker, so there may be things he missed. The remains may have been removed by other factors.

Aidan eventually asked Isaac what he wanted to say.

“Are you saying that Sadrazza offered up those corpses?”

“There’s no graveyard. But there’s no sea, so there’s no way they could have been buried. It’s entirely possible.”

Isaac said so, then added as if making an excuse.

“Of course, it’s not certain. There are many other reasons why a body could disappear. What’s certain is that someone who has done something like that once can do it again at any time.”

“but…….”

“Aidan, Sadraja has been a scavenger for a thousand years. You shouldn’t expect any honor or nobility from him that you would expect from a high priest a thousand years ago. Of course, that’s not Sadraja’s fault. But I think the Sadraja of a thousand years ago and the Sadraja of today could be completely different people.”

Time changes people.

It is common for people who have experienced great psychological shock to experience a 180 degree change in their personality.

Sadrazza has experienced both.

“But as I said, if Sadraja doesn’t betray us, nothing will happen. He’ll be a little disappointed in us. The problem is if Sadraja betrays, then the Isacrea Dawn Army itself could be destroyed. You can’t take that risk, can you?”

“Yes, I know. I just wondered if Sadrazza would really take the risk and betray us. As you said, even if he doesn’t betray us, he can still destroy the Salt Desert.”

If you think rationally, Aidan is right. However, Isaac, who experienced victory as a member of the Salt Council, knows that Sadrazza’s ritual can also fuel other desires.

He may be seeking some compensation for his thousand years of suffering and loneliness.

And usually, scavengers are beings who have put aside their morals and ethics in order to monopolize.

It was only because he lived that way that people doubted him.

***

Isaac continued to travel south in search of the necessary offerings, eventually reaching a realm close to the outer reaches.

The external world was closer to Miria than he thought.

I wondered how they would build a city in such a dangerous place, but when I thought about it, the great empires of a thousand years ago were centered around the holy land of Lua.

If you think about it that way, the center of civilization at that time may have been this side, and the border may have been the current Germania Empire.

To the people of Mirmia, the Lichtheim side might have seemed like an abomination.

That doesn’t mean Isaac would ever come close to that maddening realm. But the Apocrypha is not a clear-cut border, just an ambiguous area between light and shadow.

The thickness of the line that can actually be called the ‘outer diameter’ is tens of kilometers.

“What on earth is out there?”

The Apocrypha, beyond the reach of the order of the Code of Light, is harsh and cruel.

Aidan asked in a fearful voice above a desert valley filled with dry rocks. The south he was looking at was increasingly covered with dark clouds. A lukewarm wind blew across the flat, gray wasteland.

Although this place did not reach the outer wall, let alone the upper reaches, the ominous atmosphere felt from that wasteland made Aidan feel sick to his stomach.

“I don’t know either.”

“I think this is the first time I’ve heard Isaac say he doesn’t know something.”

“There are many things I don’t know. To be honest, compared to kids my age, I’m probably no better than an idiot.”

“Are you the one who has eavesdropped on the secrets of the gods and glimpsed the shadow of Urbanus?”

“of course.”

Isaac was sincere.

In fact, Isaac didn’t know anything that the common people of this era would have known, such as planting methods, how to distinguish wild vegetables, how to slaughter animals, and what trees could and couldn’t be used for firewood.

It was natural, since he had never thought about how to eat and survive in the monastery, and he would hunt and eat animals when he was hungry. If he had been thrown into this world without tentacles, Isaac would have starved to death long ago.

But the outside world thought that neither he nor anyone else would know, because nothing had been revealed.

The setting was simply that it was ‘a place where the Ancient Gods and the Chaos Forces fled because the order of the Light Code could not be maintained’, but Isaac could not even imagine what kind of magical realm it would be.

“The only thing that is certain is that you must not go over there.”

Isaac, although he was also a member of the Chaos faction, felt a certain compulsion not to go near that place. Just looking at the outer world from here made him feel uneasy.

Isaac stared at the dark clouds blending in with the gray wasteland, as if there was something beyond it. The dark clouds, slowly moving, seemed to be whispering something.

[betrayer.]

At last the clouds and the wasteland opened their mouths and murmured. A forked, crimson tongue rippled across the split horizon.

[Keep your promise, traitor… … Didn’t you promise us?]

[Why do you abandon your people, God… … .]

[In the end, the promise will be kept. The tricks of the traitor only delay the fulfillment of the promise.]

Isaac stumbled as he listened to the whispering voices, tongue flickering.

He felt something stirring at the back of his throat, as if there were another tentacle there, trying to respond to the voices whispering across the horizon.

[Nameless chaos watches you.]

“Get out, you crazy suicidal maniacs!!”

Isaac shouted without thinking. At that moment, he fell backwards without realizing it.

It was only then that Isaac realized that Aidan was holding his waist behind him.

Aidan quickly let go of her hand and shouted angrily.

“What are you doing?”

“What I wanted to ask is?”

“No, didn’t you suddenly start staring into space like a crazy person and muttering as you tried to walk to the edge of the cliff? I tried to stop you but you grabbed your waist, and I thought you were going to be dragged along with me!”

Isaac was confused. Was he in that state? Now that he thought about it, he was a little far from where he had been waiting. If he had gone three steps further, he would have fallen into a thousand-foot cliff.

He would have fallen if the nameless chaos had not pounded his mind awake.

Isaac looked at the horizon again. The tongue that had appeared as the sky and earth split apart was no longer visible. However, he quickly turned his gaze to the ominous, writhing clouds.

“Thank you. Thanks to you, my life was saved.”

“Oh, really… … .”

The reason Aidan was able to remain unharmed, unlike himself, was probably because he had nothing to do with the nameless chaos.

Isaac thought about the pressure of Urbansus.

They were pushing and pulling Isaac from beyond.

Come here. Join us. And keep your promise.

It was a promise I didn’t even know what it was, but I didn’t want to know, and even if I did know, I didn’t want to keep it. Even if those crazy guys forced me to make a promise, it wasn’t normal.

Then, as if responding to Isaac’s shout, the dark clouds parted and something began to pop out.

“Oh, Isaac!”

Aidan saw it late and shouted.

Isaac smiled faintly. The one he had been waiting for had arrived.

“A sack of wine is coming to fill my thirsty throat.”

That’s why Isaac came all this way to hunt for the apocryphal beings. He needed fresh sacrifices to fulfill the conditions for the successful completion of the Thirsty Feast ritual.

This guy was the one Isaac had caught when he won as the Salt Council, so he knew exactly where he would appear.

“Get ready, Aidan. I’ll catch this guy and go back.”

***

Kung. Nell dropped the corpse of the giant creature she had been carrying with difficulty in front of the fisherman’s house.

It was so huge that if it weren’t for Nel, they wouldn’t have dared drag it in. The soldiers looked at the winged snake in front of the fisherman’s house with curious eyes.

“Kaleatul. An ancient god who fled to the outside world. A god born from a longing for the sky. It is said that he has the power to control rain and lightning. Should this be enough to make up for the lack of divinity?”

This ancient god, who originally brought storms and swam leisurely through them, had suffered some harsh events in the outer world, and his entire body was twisted and spore-like tentacles were growing all over the place. It was already difficult to find any divinity, but the fact that he was ‘fresh’ was valuable enough.

In fact, Sadraza, whom I met inside the fisherman’s house, also looked satisfied.

The corpses of monsters and ancient gods that Isaac had saved over the past few days were more than enough to make up for the lack of sacrifices.

Sadraza slowly pulled Kaleatul’s corpse into the Black Pyramid with his tentacles.

Isaac watched the scene quietly.

“Is this enough?”

“If you ask for a little more… … wouldn’t that be okay?”

“It’s difficult. We have our own schedule. I’m sure you’ve prepared more than what you said.”

Sadraja nodded, although he looked a little disappointed.

“Good. I’ll figure out the rest. I’ll start the ritual now. In the meantime… … I’d like you to watch over Mirmia, as the outer court might be shaken.”